


the holiday

by singsongsung



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canadiana, F/F, Festive Family Fluff, Gen, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:54:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24592618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: “Invite Alexis to Christmas at my parents’,” he told David.David groaned, tipping his head back. “My sistercontinuouslyruins my life,” he grumbled, dragging himself up off the couch reluctantly and picking up his phone.Patrick brings David, Alexis, and Stevie home for the holidays.
Relationships: Clint Brewer/Marcy Brewer (mentioned), Johnny Rose/Moira Rose (mentioned), Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd/Alexis Rose
Comments: 133
Kudos: 342





	1. patrick

**Author's Note:**

> Giant thank-yous to jugandbettsdetectiveagency, who helped this fledgling idea take form (thank you especially re: Christmas lights!), and to sonlali for beta reading this and very kindly holding my hand through all my various disgruntled pelican anxieties.

"I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives." - Iris, _The Holiday_

_December 22_

Patrick has unloaded two suitcases, a duffel bag, and what he knows, thanks to his husband, to be a Longchamp Le Pliage bag from the trunk of the Santa Fe before he realizes that no one - not even Stevie, who’s accustomed to being responsible for her own luggage - is making even the slightest attempt to help him. He straightens up to ask, wryly but not unkindly, if any of them are interested in carrying their own stuff into the house, but the words die on his tongue at the sight that greets him.

David, Stevie, and Alexis are standing in a row on the sidewalk, gazing at Patrick’s childhood home. Stevie in her no-nonsense winter jacket with its functional hood, Alexis in a long wool coat belted at the waist, and David, with his chin tucked into the scarf he’s wearing with his peacoat, all have similar expressions on their faces as they look at the white siding, forest green shutters, black door with a semicircle window at the top, and wide porch. They look a bit like lost puppies, and it hits Patrick, with a poignant, heavy thud of his heart, that his childhood was situated somewhere in the middle of the spectrum along which their histories lie. Stevie didn’t grow up in a neighbourhood like this one; for many years, David and Alexis probably didn’t even step foot in one. When he was growing up, so much about Patrick’s life felt almost painfully normal, but to his husband, sister-in-law, and best (if David would be willing to share her) friend, his boring neighbourhood is foreign ground.

He takes a step toward David, but before he can say anything, the door opens and his mother comes out onto the porch and down the steps, holding a sweater closed around her body for warmth and smiling in her affectionate, welcoming way. His father steps out of the house behind her, calling, “You made it!”

“We did!” Patrick calls back, feeling his mouth curve into an echo of his mother’s smile.

“It’s so good to see you,” she says, extending both hands to touch his cheek as well as David’s before she wraps him up in a hug.

“You too,” he tells her as his father hugs David and asks how the roads were.

“Mm, long,” David says, having maintained throughout the trip that they should have flown. The hint of sarcasm is mostly confined to his mouth, though, his eyes soft and good-humoured as he takes his turn to hug Marcy.

“Your son is a _very_ careful driver,” Alexis tells Clint seriously, stepping forward to hug him, easily tactile as always. She’d whined about Patrick’s adherence to the speed limit for the entire first hour of their drive, which only reinforced David’s arguments in favour of flying.

“It’s great to have you girls,” Marcy says, pulling Stevie into a hug that seems to startle her. “Let’s get inside before we all catch cold.”

Patrick, his dad, and Stevie collect most of the bags, and he falls into step with his mother, leaning close when he says quietly, “Thanks for taking on the extra guests.”

“Of course, honey,” she says, slipping a hand into the crook of his elbow. “I’m so happy to have you home.”

The plan to spend Christmas in Ottawa wasn’t figured as a big deal, but it also wasn’t exactly insignificant. Patrick spent the previous Christmas with the Roses at the motel, and then his parents came to visit for Thanksgiving, staying in the guest room that David carefully furnished and decorated, complete with towels monogrammed with _MB_ and _CB_. It was time to bring David home with him, and he was excited about it, but an anxious energy clung to him once the plans were confirmed.

No one in Schitt’s Creek batted an eyelash over his relationship with David; they were supported, universally, and even loved (though not by Ronnie, in Patrick’s case). Patrick wasn’t exactly expecting to encounter bigotry back at home, but if he ran into an old classmate, an old baseball coach, or an old babysitter, he’d have to come face to face with their assumption that he was probably married to Rachel by now, and he’d be confronted with whatever crossed their expressions or their lips when he corrected them.

But Patrick doesn’t want to feel like he’s hiding, because he’s not, and any nervousness he felt about scheduling the trip home was overpowered by his desire to absorb David into the Brewer family Christmas traditions: cinnamon buns on Christmas morning that they always pretended his mother had made from scratch, dinner served on his great-grandmother’s china with the gaudy pink flowers, Hallmark movies watched in pyjamas and slippers. David would love the cinnamon buns, hate the china, and dutifully wear the slippers.

The plan took a turn, however, when Alexis didn’t book a flight to spend the holidays with Johnny and Moira in L.A., as her family seemed to expect she would, but instead decided she wanted to be in Schitt’s Creek for Christmas. _I know it’s so weird,_ she said, her voice floating out of the speaker of David’s phone, traffic noises in the background, _but it kind of feels like home now, and isn’t it, like, a_ thing, _to be home for the holidays?_

David made enough skeptical noises and arched his eyebrows to such impressive heights that Patrick had to fix his gaze on his half-finished serving of spaghetti to keep from laughing. He knew Alexis and David missed each other far more than either of them were willing to admit, but he also knew, as David did, that Alexis’ reasons for wanting to come to Schitt’s Creek weren’t entirely rooted in a desire for a sibling reunion. What she really wanted was to see Stevie, so when David informed her that he and Patrick were going to Ottawa for Christmas, Alexis did some brief, performative whining about her non-refundable ticket, and Patrick felt that everyone’s holiday plans had neatly fallen into place - for about two hours.

Stevie sent him a flurry of texts that evening, her panic building exponentially with every subsequent message, his phone lighting up over and over again with her disquietude.

(Stevie told Patrick, on an evening in September, drinking straight from a bottle of vodka in the living room of the new home he shared with his husband, that she’d hooked up with Alexis the night Patrick and David were married.

“When you say _hooked up_ ,” he began carefully, and Stevie gulped down so much liquor he abandoned the rest of his question.

She didn’t want to tell David, for reasons she never offered to share, so Patrick respected her wishes and kept their Alexis-based conversations between them. David figured it out soon enough, though, when Stevie went to New York on Rosebud Motel Group business and she and Alexis both went radio silent for three days; he asked Patrick to do the application of each step in his skincare routine for the next seven nights, apparently too overwhelmed by this new development to guarantee the steadiness of his hands, but his loyalty to Stevie was unwavering, and he never brought it up with her.)

Stevie’s first text, which arrived when Patrick was trying to watch a basketball game, demanded, _you’re just leaving me to spend christmas alone with her??_. Patrick’s response of, _it could be good for you!_ did not go over well.

 _it will not,_ was Stevie’s immediate reply, followed by _am i supposed to plan something? i don’t know how to plan shit._

 _i’m sure she’s not expecting anything_ , Patrick said, because it felt like it was the right thing to say, but a quick glance at his own Rose left him with doubts.

 _that’s a lie_ , was Stevie’s response, her scoff practically audible, which was fair. _one of the fucking hemsworths once took her to bora bora for christmas_. That text was followed quickly by _she said it was bora bor-ing, if you can believe that_ and _i swear ted’s humour infects people like an incurable disease_.

Patrick was formulating a response when another message came through: _fuck ted probably would’ve proposed on xmas. he was so fucking trigger happy with that ring._ So Patrick deleted the sentence he’d begun to type and started a new one, but Stevie beat him to it again: _i’m gonna let her down._

That one was easy enough to respond to; he wrote quickly, _no you’re not._

 _yes i am. whatever she’s expecting i’m not gonna deliver it._ He watched the dots that indicated Stevie was typing, and then read, _if you leave me here with her, i’m gonna fuck it up._

He took a long, deep breath in, allowed himself a quick glance at the score - Raptors up by eleven - and gently nudged his knee against David’s, who was reading on the other side of the couch. His husband looked up at him, his hair slightly mussed from resting against a throw pillow, a tiny quirk in his right eyebrow like he was hopeful that Patrick might abandon a pivotal game between two leading teams in the Eastern Conference to proposition him instead - which was not impossible, but something else needed to happen first.

“Invite Alexis to Christmas at my parents’,” he told David.

“What? Ew, no. Why?”

 _come to ottawa with us_ , Patrick typed on his phone, and pressed send. “Stevie’s coming too.”

David groaned, tipping his head back. “My sister _continuously_ ruins my life,” he grumbled, dragging himself up off the couch reluctantly and picking up his phone.

“Maybe don’t open with that!” Patrick called after him, and then telephoned his mother to update her apologetically on the changes in the guest list, and that was how he ended up spending six hours in a car with David, Alexis, and Stevie, “Driving Home for Christmas” playing softly on the radio.

Walking through the door of his parents’ home causes the quickest stutter of Patrick’s breath in his throat - just for an instant, even less. It’s _home_ , familiar in distinctly comfortable ways, like worn-in denim or flannel sheets in the dead of winter: he knows exactly which steps on the staircase creak, learned during his senior year of high school, sneaking out to go to Gatineau with his friends and buy beer; he knows exactly which shelf the milk is on in the fridge without even having to look, could just reach in and grab it on muscle memory alone; he knows that the throw blankets on the sofa smell like lilac laundry detergent.

But there’s something unfamiliar about it, too. It’s the place he grew up, but it also feels like it belongs to another version of himself, a version not entirely explored, in some ways unexamined. He took his prom pictures with Rachel on the staircase just to his right. He fought with her in the kitchen, a hushed conversation in the midst of a New Year’s party, a diamond ring shoved against his chest, her eyes dark with hurt, his feet unwilling to move, to go after her.

David, Stevie, and Alexis have removed their coats and are slipping them onto hangers. Patrick’s father says something that he doesn’t quite manage to hear, and he blinks, trying to find his way back into the conversation - and then he sees it.

On the table in the front entryway, which is usually decorated with garland and an ancient Santa figurine they inherited from a great-great-aunt, there’s a menorah.

Looking at it, he’s so overwhelmed with love for his parents, for the quiet but sturdy ways they love him, for the way that, with a single change to their traditional holiday decor, they’ve made sure his home is his home, as it’s always been, made sure that this space and the feeling in it envelop their son, wrap around him, around who he is, who he loves.

“Mom,” he says, the roughness in his own voice surprising him.

She follows his gaze and smiles. “I know Hanukkah’s over this year,” she says. “But I thought it would be nice to have, for David, for years when there’s overlap while you’re visiting. And for Alexis, too, of course,” she adds after a beat.

Alexis smiles and chirps, “That’s _so_ sweet. Isn’t that so sweet, David?”

David shoots her a mild glare that fades entirely, giving way to warmth, before he tells Marcy, “It’s really kind of you.”

“Of course; you’re family,” she says simply, before suggesting, “Why don’t you kids go upstairs and get settled? I’m just getting started on dinner and - ”

“Can I help?” Alexis offers.

Patrick’s head swivels toward her, and he sees David and Stevie’s heads doing the same.

“What?” Alexis asks hotly, under the combined weight of their disbelieving gazes. “Okay, it’s _rude_ to look at me like that, like I would never help with dinner!”

Stevie pokes her gently in the back. “We’re surprised because we know you can’t cook.” She smiles at Marcy; like David, her sarcasm fades out of her expression as she does so. “I can help you with dinner. She’ll watch. Maybe stir something.”

“Um, babe, I can do more than stir - ” Alexis begins as Stevie keeps on nudging her toward the kitchen, Marcy leading the way.

“We can take all the bags up, Dad,” Patrick says, starting to gather his things and some of David’s up again.

“You sure?” his father asks, and when Patrick nods, says, “Alright. Your mother made sure you all had towels, let us know if you need anything else. Or find it yourself.” He claps a hand against Patrick’s shoulder and then against David’s, and leaves them to it, heading out the side door to collect more wood for the fireplace.

“This is quite the commitment to gender roles we’ve got going here,” David says, picking up Stevie’s duffel bag like it weighs fifty pounds.

Patrick half-grins at him, lifting an eyebrow. “Would you rather help with dinner?”

David makes his _point taken_ face, the one that involves the brief downturn of the corners of his mouth and reluctant mirth in his eyes. “Lead the way.”

Stevie and Alexis’ bags deposited in the guest room, where towels are stacked neatly atop the floral bedspread and there’s a post-it on the mirror with the wifi password written out in Clint’s handwriting, Patrick moves a few steps down the hall and walks into his childhood bedroom.

It hasn’t changed much since he left for university; since then, he’s only occupied the room for brief stints of time, during holidays or on weekend visits. The pictures of Rachel are gone from the bulletin board above his old desk, but pictures of his high school friends and old baseball and hockey teams remain. His old oxford-and-navy-blue plaid comforter still covers the bed, and there are still trophies along the top of his bookshelf.

“Wow,” David says, setting his bag down on the bed. “Patrick Brewer’s first eighteen years. In _living_ colour. I see you’ve always liked blue.”

“Since at least year three,” he jokes, watching as David takes in the trophies, his collection of dog-eared Stephen King novels, the framed photo of all the Brewer cousins at the lake, the analog alarm clock that was the only thing that could be depended upon to get Patrick out of bed in his teens.

“And who,” David asks, gesturing to the posters on the wall, “do we have here?”

“That’s Vince Carter,” Patrick says, nodding to the poster on David’s left. “I showed you a compilation of his best dunks. Remember?”

“Mm,” David says, which is not exactly a yes. He turns toward the poster of Carlos Delgado. “And this… is…?”

Patrick looks at him for a few seconds, but when it’s entirely clear David’s not joking, he says, “Carlos Delgado. He was a two-time All Star when he played for the Jays? I’m beginning to think you weren’t paying attention when we watched those ’93 games together.”

David’s head does something non-committal: not quite a nod, not quite a shake. “And you would just… sleep here. With these gentlemen… gazing at you.”

He’s teasing, so Patrick teases back: “Do you not want to sleep here with these _gentlemen_ gazing at you?”

“Undecided,” David says, looking Vince Carter up and down.

“You know, this is kind of unfair,” Patrick points out. “I’ll never be able to make fun of your old bedroom.”

“I decorated it personally,” David says. “There was nothing to make fun of.”

Patrick tilts his head slightly. “Tell me about it,” he requests. David’s history is so complex, so multifaceted; he always feels hungry for new morsels, eager to learn more, to have new pieces of David to hold in his heart.

David’s lashes flicker, and his mouth flattens, just for a moment. “It wasn’t… like this,” he says, running his hand over Patrick’s old comforter with something like tenderness. “But I did have a great closet,” he adds as Patrick moves in closer to him. “And a balcony. With a trellis. Alexis always used my room to sneak out; hers was at the front of the house.”

“And I’m sure you never used the trellis,” Patrick says, his fingers brushing against David’s. He leaves his hand there, ready to be held if David wants it.

“I don’t _climb_ ,” David tells him. “But I may have… let some people climb up to me, yes.”

“Mmhm,” Patrick murmurs.

“And I had California king.” David’s hand is still on the bed. “Which could be nice. In here.”

“You don’t mean that,” Patrick says, wrapping his arms around David, whose sweater is very soft under the hands Patrick splays over his back. “You’re a secret snuggler.”

“Okay,” David replies, his own hands on Patrick’s shoulders, thumbs sliding beneath the collar of his shirt. “I have to remind you that my sister is here, by your design, and if she heard you say that I’d have to kill you both.”

“Hm, I don’t think so,” Patrick says, kissing the spot just under David’s ear, where the bone of his jaw curves. “I doubt that secret snugglers are also secret murderers.”

“You know, I could wake up tomorrow with a very earnest desire to ask to see your baby pictures,” David says, but the threat lacks heat, and his hands have started skimming up and down Patrick’s arms.

“Be my guest. I was a really cute baby.” There’s a sudden clatter from downstairs and he winces, his nose bumping against David’s affectionately before he presses a soft, slow kiss against his mouth. “We’ve gotta go make sure my mom is surviving Alexis and Stevie.”

“ _You_ brought them here,” David reminds him.

“And _we_ care about them,” Patrick reminds him in turn. “So _we_ are being supportive.”

“ _Care_ seems like a strong word,” David grumbles, but his body contradicts his whining: he follows Patrick, without dawdling, back down the stairs.

In the kitchen, Stevie’s setting the table and Alexis is hovering in the arched doorway that leads to the dining room, fidgeting with the wine glass she’s holding, twirling the stem between two fingers.

“What did you break?” David demands of her immediately, plucking the glass from her hands.

“Ugh, David,” she huffs, trying to snatch it back.

“Just a little… mishap with the butter dish,” Marcy says generously. She flashes Patrick a warm look, tinged with amusement and sliver of bewilderment, which is, in his experience, a common reaction to the Rose siblings. He mouths _sorry_ to her and she gives her head a small shake.

“Oh, look at that,” David says loudly from the entrance to the dining room, which Stevie is trying to slip through with a handful of cutlery. He blocks her way, one hand on his hip so that his elbow also serves as a barrier. He points overhead, backing himself out of the doorway, leaving her there with Alexis. “Mistletoe.”

“Oh, _cute_ ,” Alexis gushes, unruffled. She drops a kiss atop Stevie’s head, easy as anything, and yanks her brother out of the way by his elbow, simultaneously making another attempt to reclaim her wine.

Stevie escapes into the dining room the second she can. David looks thwarted, batting Alexis’ reaching hands away, and Patrick shoots him a gentle _stop it_ look, to which David responds with a mild pout before downing the rest of his sister’s drink.

Dinner is macaroni casserole, Patrick’s favourite food as a kid and always the first thing his mom makes when he’s home. Alexis pokes at the medley of noodles and meat and cheese with the tines of her fork delicately, tentatively, but David dives right in, and after two bites does the little dance he tends to do when he finds something particularly delicious, both fists in the air as he does a little shimmy. Twyla’s still trying to concoct a smoothie that’ll earn that reaction.

“This is so good,” he tells Marcy, and Patrick watches his mother’s face light up at the compliment. He figures she'll soon learn what he now knows about David: despite being raised on gourmet cuisine, David favourites are the comfort foods most kids are served during their picky-eater phases; mashed potatoes, chicken noodle soup, anything with a lot of cheese.

“Pat, you have the recipe, don’t you?” she asks.

He nods, chewing and swallowing before he confesses, “It doesn’t taste the same when I make it.”

“How’s the store?” Clint asks from down the table. “Closed while you two are here?”

Patrick nods, giving his dad a rundown on the numbers, and David provides an update on the alpaca wool mittens they’ve stocked this year, which are flying off the shelves. Marcy asks Stevie how things are with Rosebud Motel Group, and Stevie talks about their attempts to buy a motel up north that’s been in the same family for four generations. She asks his mom about work, deflecting David’s questions about whether traveling - “you know, to places like New York, just for instance, for an example, just off the top of my head” - is the best perk of her job, and Patrick’s parents joke about their countdown to retirement before steering the conversation to Alexis’ work. 

She has, of course, the most outlandish stories of all of them, and Patrick watches fondly as his parents laugh and exchange glances through Alexis’ anecdotes, accompanied by hair tosses and hands flipped downward from her wrists.

“And,” Alexis says, “I was like, listen, Georgia, I know I’m new, but I literally had to be smuggled across the border to Botswana when my boyfriend just _decided_ to leave Johannesburg in the middle of the night and took all my credit cards, so like, I can _handle_ a trip to L.A. with Sydney Sweeney and I can _totally_ avoid the paparazzi.”

Marcy’s fork falls out of her hand; she manages to catch after it bounces against her plate once, and then she sets it down. “Oh, sweetie,” she says softly, her eyes fixed on Alexis’ face, eyes Patrick recognizes from when he scraped his knee, when he broke his arm, when he stormed through the door fresh off his first breakup. She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

Alexis blinks at her, caught off guard, and then hurriedly says, “Oh my god, no, it was fine! It was kind of fun, actually, and the trunk I hid in was totally spacious.” She smiles, that beaming grin of hers, like a roomy trunk makes everything okay. “And anyway - ”

She launches into another story about an Interflix premiere, and Patrick turns to David, expecting to see his husband mid-eye-roll, but that’s not what he finds. David is looking at his mother’s face with something fragile in his eyes, something raw and heartened. Patrick understands, swiftly and keenly, that David is watching his mother watch Alexis and witnessing the kind of parenting he wishes his sister had been given, the kind of parenting he wishes _he’d_ been given, from someone who would worry and say _oh, sweetie_ , so that far less of the worrying fell onto his shoulders.

Under the table, Patrick rests his hand against David’s leg, gives his thigh a squeeze. David’s eyes flicker toward him, and a small smile finds its way onto his mouth and manages to stay there.

Patrick asks his father to pass the casserole dish, and gives David a second serving.

They stay at the table for quite a while, long enough to eat both dinner and dessert, long enough to open a third bottle of wine, long enough for Patrick’s dad to tell the story he tells every Christmas, about the year he drove all the way to Kingston in search of a Nerf toy Patrick was desperate for Santa to bring him.

“Okay,” Patrick says once his mother starts to recount the very earnest letter he sent to the North Pole, “That’s as far down memory lane as I’m willing to go.”

“But Patrick,” Stevie says, looking at him with a sparkle in her eyes that he knows not to trust. “I really want to know what your message for Rudolph was.”

“That’s between me and Rudy,” he tells her wryly. “David and I’ll do the dishes.”

He stacks plates and carries them into the kitchen while David retrieves four empty wine glasses - Stevie and Alexis aren’t quite done with theirs. He pushes scraps off the plates and into the compost bin with forks while hot water fills the sink and tells David where to find the dish towels. David lifts his eyebrows a little as he unfolds the towel he finds, which is patterned with a variety of whimsical Christmas trees.

“It’s festive,” Patrick says, vaguely embarrassed, but then he realizes that beneath the teasing eyebrows, there’s something wistful on his husband’s face. He reaches out and rolls up the sleeves of David’s sweater in brisk, even folds, and eases the towel out of his hands more gently than is probably necessary.

It’s nice, the dish-washing. At home, Patrick usually cooks, so David loads the dishwasher and washes the pots and pans; they almost never do this together. Cutlery clinks lightly against the plates in the sink, the low murmur of a news anchor’s voice floats in from the living room, and he feels simultaneously light as a feather and held fast to the ground, contentment seeping through his bones.

David looks so endearingly serious, systematically scrubbing and rinsing each dish. While he waits to dry a wine glass, Patrick snaps the Christmas tree dish towel playfully at David’s ass.

His husband looks at him, wet hands in a careful grip on the glass. His expression asks _what’s this?_ and Patrick shrugs, says simply, “You look good.”

“Is it the way the _scalding_ water you chose to run is ruining my skin?” David asks, handing over the rinsed glass. “I’m going to need a paraffin treatment.”

Patrick looks at him for a long moment - and it’s cheesy, incredibly so, but he’s so _happy_ , right here and right now, with David - and says, “It’s everything.”

The skin at the edges of David’s eyes crinkles, a sure sign of his real smile, the one without any caveats, just joy. He leans over to kiss the corner of Patrick’s mouth and then turns his body ninety degrees as Patrick does the same, so that they’re facing each other, and kisses him properly, one sudsy hand pressed against Patrick’s chest and the other on his cheek, soap bubbles tracking slowly down the side of Patrick’s neck as he shuffles his feet forward, moving closer, one hand still clutching the wine glass and the other settling against David’s rib cage, sliding around and up toward his shoulder blade.

There’s a rustle that causes them to break apart, just a few inches of space between their mouths, and Patrick opens his eyes to see his father on the other side of the kitchen, collecting the day’s _Globe and Mail_ from where it’s sitting on the countertop. There’s a pulsing half-second during which he waits for awkwardness to settle over the room, heavy and stifling, for his father to clear in throat the way he always does when he’s uncomfortable -

But Clint just says, “Mom and I are heading to bed. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight,” David says, and Patrick manages to find his voice, which comes out gravelly as he says, “Night, Dad.”

Clint turns to go, and calls over his shoulder, “Be careful with those wine glasses. Your mother will blame me if another one breaks.”

“Got it,” Patrick calls back on a laugh. He sets the wine glass down on the drying mat just before David’s damp hands find purchase on his shirt again, a single finger tracing the dip in his collarbone, making him shiver.

When the dishes are finally washed, dried, and put away, and the red patches on Patrick’s neck from David’s mouth and beard are starting to fade, he heads back toward the dining room, figuring that if Alexis and Stevie’s glasses won’t get cleaned tonight, he can at least rinse the wine stained at the bottoms of them away.

He comes to an abrupt stop at the doorway to the dining room, though, putting a hand against the door frame to stop his momentum from carrying him into the room. Stevie and Alexis are still there, in the chairs they were sitting in at dinner, talking softly. Alexis has her legs folded up onto her chair, and Stevie’s sock feet are in her lap. Stevie looks happy, toying idly with one of the buttons on her flannel, and Alexis looks - she looks like David, when he’s wearing his crinkle-eyed smile, when his guard is down and his expression’s unshuttered.

He doesn’t want to interrupt them, not with those looks on their faces, so he just backs away, deciding the glasses can wait until morning, and slips his hand into David’s as he says, “Let’s go to bed.”

They brush their teeth and do their skincare in the seafoam blue bathroom that used to belong to Patrick alone, complete with a wooden sign above the sink that orders, colourfully, WASH YOUR HANDS (“Did you have trouble remembering to do that, or - ?” David teases), and that all four of them will be sharing during their stay. There’s limited counter space, and he watches David lay claim to his territory, lining up bottles and tubs and even his toothpaste, guarding his space against the eventual onslaught of Alexis’ products.

They change for bed - cotton PJ pants and a white t-shirt for Patrick, sweatpants and striped tee for David - and then slip under the plaid comforter together, taking the same sides as they do in their bed at home, even though Patrick used to sleep on the left side of this bed. He flicks off the lamp and David says immediately, “Oh - wow.”

Patrick glances at him and then up at the ceiling and sees immediately what caused the _wow_. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah.”

“It’s like nature has come to us.”

He nudges his elbow against David’s, eyes still on the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, which are glowing faintly, tiredly, twenty-some years after they were first put up. “When I tried to take them off, the paint started peeling.”

“Is that - ” David moves his head around on his pillow. “Did you make constellations?”

“My dad did, yeah.” He points upward, his finger tracing the lines of the plasticky stars through the air. “Ursa major. Ursa minor. Orion.”

“Mm.” David rolls over onto his side, both hands tucked beneath his cheek. “Say more astronomy words.”

Patrick laughs and presses a kiss to his mouth. He means for it to be a goodnight peck, but the kiss deepens almost immediately, David’s mouth coaxing his open, David’s fingers toying with the hem of his shirt and then with the drawstring on his pyjama pants.

Pulling back slowly and reluctantly, Patrick asks, “With Vince and Carlos watching?”

“Let ’em look,” David breathes, already working his hands under Patrick’s shirt.

Patrick sits up just enough to pull the shirt up over his head, and as he lays back down, nudges David onto his back so that he can stretch out over him, humming into their kiss at the feeling of David’s fingers curling around his biceps, David’s hands stroking down his back. He finds David’s pulse point with his mouth, moves his lips down the column of David’s neck, and then does away with his husband’s t-shirt, too.

He keeps moving his mouth downward, across David’s chest and then his stomach, occasionally moving a couple inches up again, just to enjoy the way David’s hips shift impatiently as his fingers dig into Patrick’s skin. He pulls off David’s sweatpants and has just begun stroking him, teasingly light in his touch, over his strictly-for-sleeping boxers, when a high-pitched giggle wafts through the wall they’re sharing with Stevie and Alexis, who apparently found their way upstairs at some point.

David groans, gripping Patrick’s shoulder. “We can’t do this,” he says, waving his other hand between them, “to that,” he gestures broadly and irritably toward the wall, “soundtrack. I’ve been there before and it took a very uncomfortable turn.”

Patrick sighs, his hands pressed hard into the mattress on either side of David. His husband slips his hands between them, and Patrick’s hips jerk forward, but all David does is tie a neat bow in the drawstring of Patrick’s pants that he’d previously untied.

“You invited them,” David reminds him yet again.

“I know,” he says with a groan of his own. “I know, but - ” And then something occurs to him. “Wait,” he says firmly, as if David could possibly be going anywhere else. “Wait right here.”

He gets up off the bed, opens his closet, and starts rifling around in the little unit of plastic drawers that used to hold various sports paraphernalia. For a minute he thinks he’s not going to find what he’s looking for, but then - jackpot.

“Ear plugs!” he says, straightening up triumphantly. “From when I was on the swim team.”

“ _There’s_ a story I’m going to need to hear,” David says, eyeing the case Patrick’s holding suspiciously.

“I haven’t used any of these,” Patrick assures him, plucking two out. “They’re extra.” He holds them out to David.

David looks less than thrilled, but he accepts the ear plugs with almost no hesitation, slipping one into his right ear.

“You still have to be quiet,” Patrick reminds him, settling back onto the bed.

David’s eyes glow at him, a challenge, in the room’s semi-darkness. “You’ll have to make me,” he says, and then closes off his left ear with the second ear plug.

And Patrick has always been able to handle a challenge. He lays his left hand firmly over David’s mouth and dips his head again, tugs at the waistband of David’s boxers with his teeth. He pulls David’s underwear off and tosses the boxers aside, where - to David’s delight; he can feel his husband grinning against his palm - they smack Vince Carter directly in the face.

tbc.


	2. stevie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that you can’t skate on the Rideau Canal in December, but - this is fiction. I do what I want.
> 
> Thank you again to sonlali for beta reading!

_December 23_

When Stevie wakes up, sunlight peeking in through the lacy curtains over the window, Alexis is still asleep, on her stomach, lips slightly parted, hair a mess and falling across her face. She likes Alexis best in bed, be it for sex or sleep; she likes when Alexis is artless, makeup smudged or gone altogether, her voice lower, just a little huskier, all artifice dissolved.

She traces the silvery, barely-noticeable scar on Alexis’ upper arm (“The _stupidest_ paragliding accident in Interlaken, babe”) with her index finger. Last night she watched, amused, as Alexis took off all her clothes only to put on a pair of lace panties and a silky white slip that Stevie suspects was probably marketed to brides - not that that’s ever stopped Alexis before.

(“Did you put on something sexy just so I could take it off five minutes later?” she’d asked.

“Oh my god, no, Stevie,” was Alexis’ reply, hands fluttering in front of her, only really serving to draw Stevie’s eyes to her breasts. “We can’t have sex in Patrick’s parents’ house!” A pause, and then she’d added, “But if we kept things over the clothes, or maybe just a _little_ under the clothes, that barely counts as sex, right?”)

The ridiculous shit Alexis does, all delicately scrunched nose and tilted head - it shouldn’t get to Stevie like it does. What happened between them after David and Patrick’s wedding should’ve been a one-time thing, dismissed as a drunken hook-up, but after Mr. and Mrs. Rose drove off and they all finally stopped sniffling in the motel parking lot, Patrick and David went back to Patrick’s place, walking slow with their arms wrapped around each other, and Alexis, her white sweater covering up the hickey Stevie’s mouth left between her breasts, just sort of trailed Stevie back to her place and curled up under her threadbare sheets, and when they woke up again in the late afternoon, Alexis was playing with a lock of Stevie’s hair and looking at her with drowsy, curious, _hopeful_ eyes, and the rest is history.

Now, Alexis’ bare skin pebbles under Stevie’s touch and she shifts, her lashes fluttering as she opens her eyes. “Hey,” she says groggily.

“Hey,” Stevie echoes, stupidly charmed by Alexis’ sleepy voice.

Alexis inches closer, coconut-scented hair sweeping into Stevie’s face, and kisses her. Stevie should complain, should pull away and make a snarky comment about morning breath, but instead she finds herself pressing into the kiss, her fingers trying and failing to find purchase against Alexis’ slip.

“It’s Christmas Eve Eve,” Alexis informs her when they break apart, settling her head easily on Stevie’s pillow.

“That’s not a thing.”

“Of course it is. It’s my favourite day.” Alexis’ eyes are shiny, bluish green and bright. “Christmas Eve is all about the anticipation. Today is about the anticipation of the anticipation. That’s the best part.”

“That’s also not a thing,” Stevie says, unable to help herself from pushing a couple errant strands of hair off Alexis’ forehead. “We should get up. I smell bacon.”

“Mm, _yum_ ,” Alexis says, and presses another kiss against Stevie’s mouth.

Stevie surrenders to the kiss for a minute, the tips of her fingers resting against Alexis’ cheek, before she murmurs, “Lex,” meaning to sound more chiding than her breathless voice allows.

“Okay,” Alexis sighs. She sits up and then pulls Stevie with her, all the way out of the bed, like it was her idea to leave it. “We’re up.”

Eggs and bacon and toast are waiting for them in the kitchen. Patrick’s mom is such a _mom_ ; Stevie keeps feeling the impulse to wrap an apron around her and steer her onto a sitcom set, or to poke her just to confirm that she’s actually a real live person. Marcy asks how they want their eggs, and Stevie kind of wants to protest that she can make her own breakfast, but she ends up saying, “Any way is fine. Um, scrambled? Fried? Whatever’s easiest.”

“Here, babe,” Alexis says, and Stevie turns just in time to find a cup of coffee being pressed into her hands.

“Thanks,” she says automatically, sneaking a quick glance at Marcy (totally absorbed in scrambling eggs) and at David (sort of half-folded over the table with a white-knuckled grip on his own cup of coffee) to confirm that no one is looking too closely or too curiously at her. Alexis calls everyone _babe_ , from girls in front of her in line at Starbucks to the mailman, but she’s been dropping it rather conspicuously into every third sentence she says to Stevie lately.

“So, I had an idea,” Patrick says, after he’s set a plate of food down in front of Stevie. As always, he’s far more chipper in the morning than the rest of them. “I thought we could all go to the Canal this afternoon, and go skating.”

“Skating?” Stevie repeats warily, in unison with David, whose tone of voice is equally skeptical but significantly more alarmed.

Patrick breathes a laugh. “It’ll be fun,” he says. “We can rent skates there.”

“I’m struggling to see where the fun starts,” David says, his gaze sliding toward Stevie and then back to Patrick again.

“David, come on,” Alexis says. “Don’t be Grinchy.” She holds up her hands, wrists flicked downward, and kind of walks them through the air. “I can’t wait to see your lil’ gazelle legs in your lil’ skates!”

“Yeah, David,” Patrick says, trying and failing to school the amusement off of his face as he pulls out the chair next to David’s and takes a seat.

From her spot by the stove, Marcy says, “When Patrick was little, he and Clint would skate on the Canal all the time. I’d watch. Take some pictures, drink some cider… ”

Patrick nods, reaching out a hand and resting it on David’s arm as he adds, “There are beavertails.”

David narrows his eyes at his husband, takes a bite of his toast and chews it very slowly, building up suspense, before he swallows and says, “Fine. Stevie and I can be spectators.”

“Oh, _yay_ , David,” Alexis trills, to her brother’s displeasure. Patrick catches Stevie’s eye and they exchange an amused look.

Then his smile grows wider, gets _knowing_ , and Stevie rams her heel against his calf, says a flat, “Oops,” as his brows furrow in response. Patrick’s been nothing but kind to her throughout her Alexis-based panics of the past few months, but she can’t stand it when he starts looking at her like he can see exactly what’s going on in her head.

She’s terrified he might actually be able to make an accurate educated guess.

Apparently, Clint and Marcy always wait until their son is home for the holidays before they decorate the tree. Stevie helps Patrick with the breakfast dishes, drying skillets and spatulas, while David and Alexis stay at the table with their second cups of coffee, and then they all move into the living room, where boxes of decorations await them.

There’s a fire burning low in the fireplace, making the whole house toasty warm. Classic Christmas music is playing out of a wireless speaker: Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra; _Jack Frost nipping at your nose…_

David and Clint are already at work when Stevie joins them, attempting to untangle strings of lights. David’s loosening the knots in the electrical cords while also frowning at the little colourful bulbs.

“There we go!” Clint announces, when each strand of lights is laid out across the floor, tangle-free. “Let’s see how many of these bulbs survived the year,” he says, plugging a set in.

Every single one of the bulbs lights up, which is ostensibly good, but Stevie has to bite back a grin at David’s horrified expression upon seeing the blazing LED lights. He pulls his hands close to his chest, like he needs to shield himself from what he’s seeing.

“Isn’t this great, David?” she asks, unable to resist. “A full, working string of lights. A Christmas miracle.”

“Just great, Stevie,” he says at the top of a breath, through gritted teeth. “Um, Clint? Do we have any - are there any strings of _white_ lights that we could maybe… rustle out of storage? Because these lights are just very - they’re great, just… dazzling, but also very, um… _loud_? And we wouldn’t want to overwhelm the rest of Marcy’s beautiful decor.”

Stevie steps closer, taking pity on Clint and his perplexed expression. “Want me to help with the lights?” she asks under her breath.

“He doesn’t need your help, Stevie!” David says, waving a string of the offending lights around. “I’m helping. Thank you!”

She raises her hands into the air to prove that she’s not helping, and sticks her tongue between her teeth as she lifts her eyebrows at David. “Godspeed,” she tells Clint with exaggerated formality, and then retreats a few feet away, where Alexis is kneeling on the ground, opening up boxes of ornaments.

“Hey,” she says when Stevie joins her.

“Hey,” Stevie echoes, kneeling too, sitting close enough that their knees brush. She picks up a porcelain figure hanging on a hook, a polar bear wearing a Santa hat; it seems like the kind of thing Alexis would like.

“Just a cozy little bear!” Alexis says, but most of her attention is on something else, which she takes out of the box on her right. “Look,” she says warmly.

The ornament she’s pulled out - if it can be called that - is three popsicle sticks glued together, featuring two stick-on googly eyes and a fuzzy red ball to represent Rudolph’s nose. Alexis flips it over and shows Stevie where, on the back of one of the popsicle sticks, _Patrick, age 3_ is written neatly.

Stevie glances up just in time to see Alexis’ smile flicker, softly, just barely. She holds the old craft by toddler-aged Patrick like it’s something precious. “David and I never did stuff like this. Not even with Adelina.” Her eyes land on Stevie’s face. “What about you?”

She scoffs, nearly snorting with the force of it. “That would be a hard no.” Her mother did not do things solely for Stevie’s benefit, with the goal of cultivating memories. Their artificial Christmas tree was decorated with a single set of colourful bulbs, purchased from Walmart.

Alexis places the popsicle stick reindeer back in the box of ornaments carefully, then brushes her hand over Stevie’s thigh before hopping to her feet. “I’ll be right back,” she says, her voice peppy again, and Stevie watches her go, still holding onto the porcelain polar bear.

With the tree decorated and waiting to be illuminated (colourful lights and all) and admired in the evening, Patrick drives them to Rideau Canal.

He leads the way to the skate rental place, David’s arm tucked through his, and Stevie lags behind a little. Alexis changed for their outing, into an absurdly fuzzy sweater and a pair of jeans, which is enough to make Stevie’s brain short circuit - she didn’t even know Alexis _owned_ jeans. It doesn’t help that Alexis also borrowed Stevie’s red toque with the pom-pom on top and is currently wearing it over the braids she’s woven into her hair.

Alexis and Patrick get skates while David does a lot of grimacing and muttering about how objectionable he finds shared footwear. Alexis blows Stevie and David a kiss, throwing one of her terrible winks that often involve both of her eyes in their direction, before she steps onto the ice after Patrick, far steadier in her skates than Stevie would’ve expected. She files this new information away as one of those Inexplicable Alexis Things.

After lingering a moment to make sure that Patrick and Alexis stay upright, David nods to himself and gives Stevie’s jacket sleeve a tug. “We need snacks,” he says, guiding her toward the sign that advertises beavertails.

David gets his pastry, Stevie finds a place selling apple cider and gets a cup, and they locate Patrick and Alexis again: they’ve moved a few meters down the Canal from where Stevie and David left them. Stevie leans her elbows on the rail that lines the side of the path closest to the Canal, not minding the cold that seeps through her coat; the chill contrasts nicely with the heat of the cider she’s cradling in her mittened hands.

Out on the ice, Patrick and Alexis are laughing about something together, her hand grasping his forearm when she nearly topples over. Alexis looks younger, somehow, her expression amused and open, her cheeks flushed. Watching them, Stevie can practically feel the fulfillment radiating off of David, at least half of which she’s willing to assign to his husband and sister rather than the beavertail.

And maybe he’s getting the same waves of contentment from her, because he takes a break from eating to observe, “You look _happy_.”

Stevie works very hard to quell any semblance of a smile, and shoots him a glare without any feeling behind it. His eyebrows climb to an impressive height on his forehead before dropping down again. As he resumes eating, she allows herself to examine his face for a beat, searching for signs that he knows what’s going on with her and Alexis. She’s pretty confident Patrick hasn’t let anything slip, but David needles at her about Alexis sometimes, prodding at her like he suspects. She doesn’t get anything from her inspection of him, though: David’s arranged his expression into placid neutrality.

Looking at him, she feels a stab of something like guilt. She’s not totally sure why she doesn’t want to tell David - he’s her best friend; she’s told him more things about herself than she's told anyone else in the world. Maybe it’s because of their long ago, short-lived friends with benefits arrangement, and she doesn’t want it to seem like she’s collecting Roses. Maybe it’s because she’s afraid he’ll warn her off dating his historically flighty sister, and she’ll have to decide if she wants to listen to him. Maybe it’s because, if she tells her best friend and Alexis’ brother, it’ll become heart-stoppingly real.

What if he tells her she’s making a terrible mistake, or what if he’s upset about it, or what if, worst of all, he’s _excited_ for her? What if he gets invested in her relationship with Alexis, and then Stevie’s forced to admit, out loud, to David and Alexis and probably also their parents and definitely all of Schitt’s Creek, that she’s invested, too - that she cares about the woman out there on the ice, all legs in those fucking jeans, garnering double-takes from her fellow skaters? What if Stevie has to admit that she wants to be cared about right back?

She opens her mouth and then snaps it shut again. Eventually, she tells David, “You have nutella on your face.”

He swipes at his chin with a handful of napkins, then leans into her side briefly, the press of his body to hers a welcoming burst of warmth.

“I’m happy you’re here,” he tells her in the slightly lilting tone his emotional indulgences still take on sometimes, not looking at her.

She doesn’t look at him, either. “I am, too.”

Alexis is very fidgety on the drive back to the Brewers’, pulling at her seatbelt, chewing the end of one of her braids, twirling one earring around on its post.

“Okay,” David says sharply from the passenger seat, “ _what_ is your damage, Alexis?”

She looks at him with big, wounded eyes. “What are you talking about, David? What’s _your_ damage?” She turns toward Stevie, seeking either explanation or support, but Stevie can’t give her much more than a sheepish shrug.

“You are kind of…” She trails off, not sure exactly what Alexis kind of is.

“I’m fine!” Alexis says, frowning deeply at David and then staring out the window, pointedly ignoring the rest of them. In the rearview mirror, David’s eyes find Stevie’s, asking _what the fuck?_ , and she can only shrug again.

Once Patrick’s parked in his parents’ driveway, Alexis flounces out of the car and stalks toward the door, where she waits for Stevie, David, and Patrick to catch up with her with her arms crossed over her chest, her jaw working irritably.

Patrick pulls out his keys and unlocks the door, and Alexis practically dives in front of him. “Wait!” she says the second the door is open all of one inch. “Let Stevie go first.”

She turns and tugs the zipper on Stevie’s coat down. “Take this off,” she orders.

Stevie blinks at her, baffled, but she finishes unzipping her jacket and shoves her mittens into the pockets as Alexis steers her into the house and David asks, “Have you been _bodysnatched_ , Alexis, what the hell are you - ”

Marcy comes to greet them, her presence a salve to the moods Stevie feels trapped between: David shuts up, and Alexis’ pout vanishes, but she also starts bouncing on her toes in her heeled booties as she peels Stevie's jacket off for her.

“How was it?” Marcy asks.

“It was great,” Patrick says, unwinding the scarf from around his neck. “I think Stevie even smiled.”

She scrunches her nose at him, refraining from giving him the finger in front of his mom.

“Can we - ” Alexis begins, still basically vibrating with energy, her coat tossed aside. “Is - ”

Marcy smiles at her and tips her head toward the dining room, a wordless invitation, and Alexis’ hands land on Stevie’s shoulders, propelling her in that direction with perhaps more force than necessary.

“Okay,” she says, pushing back against Alexis’ hands instinctively, never liking to have her course determined by someone else. “What is - ”

And then Alexis is hurrying her through the doorway into the dining room, and Stevie is struck speechless by the sight that greets her.

There’s a tablecloth spread across the the wooden surface of the table, and atop it there’s a kindergartner's delight’s worth of craft supplies: popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, construction paper, markers, stickers, even fucking _glitter glue_. Alexis has her hands clasped together now, vibrating less than she was before, and she’s looking at Stevie earnestly, apprehensively.

“What?” Stevie says, or tries to say - the word gets caught halfway out of her throat.

“I know you’re all much too old for this,” Marcy says, having joined them without Stevie noticing. “But Alexis thought it would be fun, and I agreed - a nice trip down memory lane. And some additions to our tree.”

“We’re going to make our own ornaments, Stevie,” Alexis says. She sounds as bubbly as ever, but her voice is soft.

“Oh my god,” David says, as he and Patrick crowd into the room. “Alexis.”

“Just _shut up_ , David, okay,” she begins, sounding startlingly ferocious. “Can you just - ”

He grabs the wrist attached to one of her flailing hands. “I am _just_ ,” he says, sounding only half-annoyed. “This is… nice.”

“Oh,” Alexis breathes, clearly taken aback. They look at each other for an instant, and then she wiggles her wrist out of his grasp and slips her hand into his, squeezing once before she lets go.

Patrick bumps his arm against David’s. “What do you think?”

“I think my ornament’s going to get a place of honour on the tree,” he says, cracking a smile. “Marcy, how do you usually do it? The best ones near the top, or at the front, or - ”

“Sit down,” Alexis’ voice says softly by Stevie’s ear, and she finds herself deposited into a chair. The sheaf of papers in primary colours, the penguin-shaped stickers, and the pile of popsicle sticks blur in front of her eyes, which are suddenly wet. She keeps her hands in her lap, fingers clenched, scared that if she even so much as touches a marker she’ll burst into tears.

Alexis settles in next to her, pushing their chairs close together. Beneath the cover of the table, her arm loops through Stevie’s. “We can make ours together,” she says decisively, grabbing a few green pipe cleaners. Stevie is dimly aware of David giving Patrick some kind of lecture about glitter, but all she can really hear is Alexis, who adds, “We can make, like, a little tree with a bunch of tiny ornaments! Or our own cozy polar bear. Or whatever you want.”

Stevie looks over at her, at Alexis’ eyes gleaming with enthusiasm, at her mussed-up braids, at the way her teeth are digging into the inside of her lower, glossy lip, like her whole life depends on what Stevie’s about to say, and Stevie doesn’t even care that David is sitting right across from them, imposing his own crafting laws. She doesn’t even register Marcy inquiring about whether or not they’d like hot chocolate. Everything fades out except for the familiar bergamot and orchid notes of Alexis’ favourite perfume, the gentle flutter of Alexis’ eyelashes, and the collection of crafting materials, about three decades too late and also right on time, that Alexis made sure were laid out across the Brewers’ dining table, just for her.

Her fingers twine their way through Alexis’ as she swallows around the lump in her throat, and she manages, at last, to say, “I think a tree sounds good.”

After dinner and an apparently traditionally-mandated viewing of _Elf_ , when they’re alone in the guest room again, Alexis wrestles her way out of her skintight jeans and then just sort of hovers by the bed in her underwear while Stevie gets changed. Stevie’s expecting her to whip something lacy or slinky out of her overstuffed suitcase, but she waits until Stevie’s discarded the day’s flannel shirt and then plucks it up, slipping her arms through the sleeves and doing up a couple of its buttons before crawling under the blankets.

Stevie joins her, pulling the comforter up to her chin, and Alexis immediately pulls her closer. She spoons Stevie, her thighs tucked behind Stevie’s, an arm wrapped securely around her waist, and hums happily, settling in to sleep.

Alexis smells a little bit like glue sticks, a little bit like sugar cookies, a little bit like whiskey. Stevie touches the flannel of her own shirt over Alexis’ skin, and takes a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of her pulse.

“Merry Christmas Eve Eve, Alexis,” she whispers.

She can feel Alexis’ smile against her shoulder. “To you too, babe,” she says, and soon enough, the slow, even pattern of her breathing lulls Stevie to sleep.

tbc.


	3. alexis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heartfelt thank-you once again to sonlali for beta-ing, and thank you to all of you for reading!

_December 24_

Half-awake, Alexis stretches an arm across the bed and finds nothing but crumpled sheets. She opens her eyes to confirm that Stevie’s not there, and juts her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout even though there’s no one to see it.

People are up: she can hear the soft rumble of voices downstairs, the sound of a drawer opening and shutting. She strains her ears, listening for the familiar notes of Stevie’s voice, but she doesn’t catch them. She doesn’t think Stevie would’ve gone in search of coffee without her, but maybe Stevie was trying to be nice by letting her sleep in a little.

It’s very sweet, when Stevie does nice things for her. Alexis has started scribbling Stevie’s most adorable nice gestures in a notebook she was supposed to use for work. She told herself, at first, that the memories, scribbled in blue ink, would be super useful as blackmail if David and Stevie ever decided to join forces against her, but the truth is that she just doesn’t want to forget any of them.

The bedroom door swings open, and the mystery of Stevie’s whereabouts is solved: she’s dressed for the day, towel in one hand, her hair damp and tangled - fresh from the shower.

“No invite for me?” Alexis asks, tugging at the neckline of the flannel shirt of Stevie’s that she’s wearing, exposing more of her skin.

Stevie rolls her eyes, but something flickers through them first, something that could probably be labeled as want, if Alexis was into labeling things. “We’re sharing that bathroom with your brother,” she points out.

“Ugh,” Alexis says with a shudder, sitting up and kicking the blankets aside. “Want me to brush your hair?”

“Sure,” Stevie says softly, so Alexis skips over to her suitcase and rummages through it until she locates her wet brush. She pats the mattress, and Stevie sits down, cross-legged. Alexis settles in behind her and gets to work combing through Stevie’s lush, dark hair. The east-facing window is letting the sun into the room, and she admires the natural red-brown highlights that gleam in Stevie’s hair in the right light.

They’re quiet together for a couple minutes, comfortably, before Stevie says, “Hey, Lex… thank you for yesterday.”

“’Course,” Alexis says easily, carefully brushing out a small knot.

Stevie’s shoulders shift under the t-shirt she’s wearing. Her hair has left patches of moisture on it, rendering little sections of the shirt semi-translucent; if Alexis looked hard enough, she could see Stevie’s pale skin through the fabric.

“I should’ve said that yesterday,” Stevie says, words a little strained, like she’s making a difficult confession.

A fond smile curls its way onto Alexis’ mouth. Graciously, she says, “I knew you were feeling it.”

“Right. Okay. Just - ” Stevie rolls her shoulders back. “I’m trying to work on that. Saying things that I feel, instead of just feeling them.”

“ _Love_ that for you, babe,” Alexis gushes, being mindful that the teeth on the hairbrush don’t bite at the shell of Stevie’s ear. “But, you know - ” She pauses, searching for the right words. Stevie doesn’t turn around or ask _what?_ or even let her shoulders hunch forward - she just waits, until Alexis has decided what she wants to say and starts to say it. “I think it’s, like, okay sometimes, just to feel something. And to feel what someone else is feeling. And just… feel, together.”

She can see the edge of Stevie’s smile. She keeps brushing, even though Stevie’s hair is thoroughly detangled, until there’s a knock on the door and Patrick calls, “Breakfast’s ready!”

“Be there in a minute!” Alexis calls back. She runs her hand along Stevie’s hair, glossy from its recent encounter with shampoo and conditioner. “There,” she proclaims. “You’re perfect.”

Before she bounds up off the bed to get dressed, Stevie reaches back and squeezes her bare knee.

Their hands tangle together on the way down the stairs, and separate automatically as they make their way to the kitchen. Alexis has let Stevie set the boundaries since the very beginning, when she arched inquisitive eyebrows at Stevie before removing her well-tailored maid of honour pants and got a _fuck, yeah_ in response, so she doesn’t protest the loss of contact, but she does miss it.

Luckily, her sense of loss is quickly replaced by complete delight at the sight that greets her in the kitchen: Clint, Marcy, Patrick, and David are all wearing _matching Christmas sweaters_ , knit in red and green and silvery yarn. Alexis’ jaw nearly hits the floor, and Stevie is making a choked sound as she tries to stifle her laughter.

“This,” she begins, as her brother glowers at her from where he’s cutting viciously into a three-piece-high stack of French toast, “is _so_ cute. I _love_ these; Marcy, did you make them?”

“I did,” she says, with a hint of pride, which makes Alexis smile even more broadly - she _loves_ a boss lady who’s confident in herself. “I’m sorry we don’t have them for you, girls; they take a while to knit and I only knew you were coming a few days ago…”

“Ohmygod, it’s totally fine,” Alexis assures her. “Right, babe?” she prompts Stevie.

“Totally fine,” Stevie echoes. She picks up one of the forks that’s been laid out and spears a piece of David’s French toast. “Are you eating an _entire_ batch?” she asks him, popping the bite into her mouth despite the fact that he’s wearing the I-will-end-you glare that Alexis knows well from the time he caught her raiding his scarf collection before a trip to Reykjavik.

“More’s coming up,” Marcy tells Stevie, flipping a thick slice of bread in a pan.

“This is just, like, so beautiful,” Alexis says, sliding into the chair next to David’s. Patrick catches her eye, and she can tell he knows exactly how David feels about the sweater. She winks at him as she asks her brother, “Do you know what we should do, David?”

“Find a tree to fall out of?”

She ignores him. “A _photo shoot_. To mark the _occasion_. My phone has a really good camera - ”

There’s a warning in his voice when he says, tersely, “That’s not necessary, Alexis.”

Stevie sets a cup of yogurt in front of Alexis, which distracts her momentarily, and she tilts her head back to give Stevie a sunny, thank-you smile before pulling its lid off. “I don’t know, David,” Stevie says, in a faux-serious voice, “I think Alexis might be onto something. I mean, how else will you remember such a great day, and such a great sweater?”

“Okay,” David says, putting down his fork slowly. He shoots a vaguely desperate look at Patrick. “Okay, I think what’s happening here is that Alexis and Stevie are a little jealous, because they don’t have sweaters, so maybe I should just take this off for a little while - ”

Alexis shakes her head emphatically, spooning yogurt into her mouth to fend off a grin, while Stevie says, overly cheerful, “Alexis and Stevie are really happy for you and your sweater.”

Sliding pieces of French toast onto plates, Patrick says, wryly, “Alexis and Stevie should eat their breakfast quietly.”

Alexis blinks big, innocent eyes at him, and then wrests the maple syrup from David’s clutches, handing it over to Stevie.

The sweaters are not the only Christmas Eve tradition in the Brewer household. It turns out to be a fairly scheduled day, much different than the Christmas Eves in Alexis’ past, when she’d sleep off a hangover until three p.m., at which point she’d start getting ready for the annual Christmas party, always sending a series of texts to her boyfriend of the moment to make sure he knew that showing up to be her arm candy in the night’s photographs was non-negotiable.

In Patrick’s family, the day starts with French toast, followed by a variety of food-based tasks. Alexis and Stevie are entrusted with breaking dried-out loaves of bread into chunks for dressing. When that’s done, Alexis cuts up a tray of Nanaimo bars while Stevie peels apples for pie and David and Patrick hover over the stove, making cranberries. Listening to Patrick and Clint talk about aunts and uncles and cousins while David occasionally interrupts with a somewhat frantic question about whether the sauce he’s stirring is behaving correctly, watching the little tilts of Stevie’s head in time to the beat of “Feliz Navidad,” Alexis wonders if this is what Christmas is going to be like for the rest of her life.

That idea might’ve terrified her once. If she’d dated someone like Patrick and followed him home for the holidays and found this, a happy family ensconced in a predictable routine that they all seemed to relish, she would’ve excused herself to go to the washroom and climbed out a second-storey window, called a cab and made a beeline for an airport, where she could choose any of the departing flights listed neatly on a screen and find something new, something unexpected, something that would spike her adrenaline.

But she’s not the same as she once was. She doesn’t feel like she’s being held hostage in a place she doesn’t understand; rather, she feels snug and safe, folded in, like she’s found a spot where she can take off her heels, put her feet up, and stay a while. And even though David’s cranberry-based anxiety is really annoying, even though he keeps plucking uneasily at the sleeves of his sweater, Alexis knows, the way only a sister can, that he’s happy here, and she wants that for him, wants it so fiercely it makes her teeth ache.

And maybe, she finds herself thinking, watching Stevie do an unconscious, adorable little dance with her hips in sync with the chords of “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” she could want it for herself, too.

When late afternoon rolls around, Clint declares that it’s time to make his ‘world famous’ eggnog. He’s compiling all the ingredients when he sighs, “Crap,” which prompts Alexis to look up, along with Stevie and David and Patrick, from the board game they’re all playing.

“What’s up, Dad?” Patrick asks.

“I should make a bigger batch,” Clint explains. “But I didn’t plan for that, and we don’t have enough bourbon.”

“The LCBO should still be open, honey,” Marcy suggests, which makes Clint sort of wince while Patrick grimaces sympathetically.

Apparently David has also noticed the pained expressions Patrick and his dad are wearing, because he asks, “What? What is it?”

Marcy gives Clint’s shoulder a bolstering pat. “The liquor store will be a zoo today,” she explains.

“Oh!” Alexis says. If there’s anything she can handle, it’s a busy store full of shoppers on a time crunch. “I can come with you. I’m _super_ good at navigating crowds. You should see me at an Isabel Marant sample sale.”

“It _is_ one of her few talents,” David says.

“Stand under an icicle,” she huffs at him, without losing a single watt of her smile.

“Well… okay,” Clint says. “Nice of you to offer, Alexis.”

“No problem,” she says, and means it. They’re playing The Game of Life, and despite choosing to go to college, she still has the ugliest house out of all of them (Patrick said it was against the rules to trade with Stevie), and she’s somehow acquired enough children to fill her little car. She pushes her chair back from the table and runs her knuckles lightly along Stevie’s back, shoulder to shoulder, in a silent goodbye gesture. “Take care of my kids, okay?” she asks over her shoulder on the way to the front hall.

Clint drives a sensible SUV, just like Patrick has ever since his old car finally broke down for good, which is a very cute look for both of them. Alexis gets the sense that he’d be happy to drive to the store without making small talk, but she hates dead air, so she only manages to give him about sixty seconds of quiet before she says, “Your house is so nice, Clint. And so are you and Marcy, obviously. It’s really, really nice of you to have me and Stevie here.”

Eyes on the road, he smiles faintly, sort of indulgently, reminiscent of the way her own dad smiles sometimes. “It’s our pleasure, Alexis.”

“I’m really happy my brother’s a part of your family,” she adds.

“Well,” he says, flicking on his signal before he makes a right turn, “You are, too.”

Alexis looks out the window, trying to hide how much her smile has grown. “Did you always want this? Like, a nice little family?”

Clint laughs, which makes her turn her head toward him again. “No,” he says. “No. I was… a bit of a free spirit, when I was younger. I was in a band - we were terrible, but I didn’t know it then. I wasn’t thinking about marriage or kids.”

She’s surprised by that. Looking at Clint now, she’d never have guessed he was once an aspiring rock star. “So what changed?”

The look on his face grows a bit distant. “I met Marcy,” he says simply. “That’s what changed. She’s what changed.”

“That’s all it took?” Alexis asks, startled.

“Yeah. That was it. Once we got together, all I could think was… what else could I possibly want? What in this world could be better than being with her, than making her happy? Or at least trying my best to,” he says, chuckling.

“That’s… super sweet,” Alexis says. Her voice comes out softer than she was expecting, less exuberant.

Clint steers into a parking spot. The lot is pretty full, people moving from their cars to the store and vice versa, so Alexis steels herself to get in and get out, quickly and painlessly.

She’s just opened her door when Clint says, “Alexis - ”

“Yeah?”

Hesitantly, he asks, “Your brother hates the sweater, doesn’t he?”

“Oh my god,” she says. “Yes. _Yes_ , Clint, he _totally_ hates it.” She presses her hands together and holds them against her heart. “I could _not_ have asked for a better Christmas present.”

Her words surprise a laugh out of him, and he nods to himself. “Ready to face this mayhem?” he asks, glancing toward the store.

“Always,” she chirps, and once she’s hopped out of the car, she leads the way in.

It turns out that Clint’s eggnog is, in fact, really good. They drink glasses of it after dinner, all the lights turned out except for those on the tree, and watch _It’s a Wonderful Life._ Marcy and Clint sit on the loveseat, and when Alexis steps into the living room she finds that David and Patrick are already on the couch, cuddled up but still not making quite enough room for four people to fit on a sofa designed for three.

She marches over and sits down so close to her brother she’s nearly in his lap and says, “Here, Stevie,” as she attempts to shuffle even closer to David, prepared to keep elbowing and hip-checking him until there’s space for Stevie to squeeze in next to her.

But Stevie shakes her head and says, “It’s okay.” She drops down onto the floor in front of the sofa instead, stretching her legs out in front of her and leaning back against the base of it, her head between Alexis’ knee and David’s, now that Alexis is sitting on a cushion of her own.

“Stevie doesn’t want anyone to see her cry,” David announces to the room, and Alexis finds herself frowning at her brother in tandem with Stevie.

“This movie always gets me, too, hon,” Marcy tells Stevie kindly, and Stevie shrinks back against the couch like she wishes it would swallow her whole as the title sequence begins to play.

As David predicted, Stevie does start to cry, around the point when George is unable to find the petals from Zuzu’s flower in his pocket. When there’s a telltale sniffling sound, Alexis is sort of expecting David to be a jerk about it, but he just smiles at the back of Stevie’s head, warmth in his eyes.

In one smooth motion, she slips off the couch, sliding down until her ass hits the floor and she’s sitting next to Stevie, who turns to her, looking kind of perplexed to find her there.

“It’s a really good movie,” Stevie says by way of explanation, her voice all gravelly and wet in her throat. It does something to the cavity of Alexis’ chest.

Her fingers twitch with the desire to wipe away the tear that’s currently charting a course down Stevie's left cheek, but she doesn’t think Stevie would like it if she gave in to the impulse, so she settles for saying, “Oh, I know, babe. It’s a _classic_.”

Stevie’s shoulder presses into hers. Alexis shifts even closer.

Pleasantly tipsy off of eggnog, Alexis brushes her teeth side by side with Stevie in the bathroom, their elbows and hips and knees bumping flirtatiously, smiles foamy with toothpaste exchanged through the mirror.

Stevie spits and asks, “Think David’ll wear his sweater to bed?”

That sends Alexis into a fit of giggles around her toothbrush, and Stevie grins. Her knee nudges Alexis’ again, the flannel fabric of her pyjama pants brushing against Alexis’ uncovered knee, almost tickling. She looks at Stevie, at her easy, unencumbered smile, and she keeps hearing reverberations of Clint’s words from earlier, in the car.

_What else could I possibly want? What in this world could be better than being with her, than making her happy?_

She’s yanked out of her thoughts by the sound of the doorbell. She looks over her shoulder, at the bathroom door, and then at Stevie, who shrugs, her brows furrowed in confusion. Alexis makes sure to smooth out the resulting creases between her eyebrows with a gentle thumb against Stevie’s skin before they go out into the hallway, just in time to hear David say, “Oh, my god.”

At the top of the stairs, they have a good view of the front door. Alexis gasps, “Oh, my god!” and Stevie grabs her arm.

Her parents are standing in Clint and Marcy Brewer’s foyer. Her mother, in a shiny silver coat and a curly auburn wig, is hugging Patrick, and her father is taking off his jacket as David demands, “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Oh, David,” Moira says. “Can’t parents wish to spend Christmas with their bébés?”

Alexis begins to jog down the stairs, pulling Stevie along with her. “Mom, Dad,” she says. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

“Alexis!” her father says, sounding genuinely happy to see her. “And Stevie! We didn’t know you’d be here!”

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Rose,” Stevie says on half a laugh. As they move toward her parents, Alexis clocks the fact that Marcy and Clint look a smidge shell-shocked; she and David will have to help them through Christmas with the Roses.

Her father reaches out to hug her and Stevie at once, his arms folding around them. Cheek pressed against his shoulder, his suit jacket smelling like his familiar cologne, Alexis sees the way the corner of Stevie’s mouth is scrunched up, like she can’t quite conquer her impulse to smile.

Johnny releases them, but not before stamping a kiss against each of their foreheads.

Alexis’ heart feels full.

tbc.


	4. david

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One final, effusive thank you to sonlali for her beta skills & support! 
> 
> Thanks as well to everyone who is reading this holiday fic in the middle of June, lol.

_December 25_

David wakes up just enough to realize two things: that he’s still tired, craving at least another couple hours of sleep, and that, in the night, he and Patrick turned away from each other, and their backs are now pressed lightly together.

He shifts onto his back, intending to roll over and slip an arm around Patrick as he falls back asleep - and then the events of the previous night slam back into his consciousness, startling him fully awake with a jolt through his body that shakes the mattress enough to wake Patrick, too.

“Wha’s it?” he mumbles blearily, his hand reaching back and patting at David’s chest over the comforter. “Okay?”

“My parents are here,” David says, staring at the wall Johnny and Moira are sleeping on the other side of. (Alexis and Stevie had trudged down the stairs clutching pillows and blankets as David said, in his most unapologetic apology voice, “Everyone else here is married, so,” and they both flashed him the finger.)

“Mmph,” Patrick murmurs in agreement, flopping over onto his back, too. “S’nice they wanted to see you…”

“It’s nice,” David agrees, because objectively, it is. “But is it also weird?”

Patrick’s eyes are only half open. “I guess it’s kind of weird that they didn’t mention they were coming, but it’s not that surprising, knowing your parents.”

“No, I mean - weird that they came at all. My mother’s been talking about a party Joyce DeWitt’s throwing for a month.”

Patrick rolls onto his side, facing David. There are pressure marks on his cheek from the creases in his pillowcase. “They said they wanted to see you and Alexis. I know that wasn’t always how the holidays went, for your family, but you all spent the last two Christmases together. Maybe they liked that.”

“Hmm,” David murmurs in response. It’s a generous thought, and even a plausible one; it aligns with the last few years of his life, with the way his family has learned to be a unit, but all the years before are still there, too, preventing him from investing entirely in the idea that his parents flew from Los Angeles to Ottawa on Christmas Eve out of absolutely nothing other than parental affection.

“Hey,” Patrick says, pulling David back to the present moment. “Let’s get up.”

“It’s still early,” David protests instinctively.

Patrick grabs his watch off the bedside table, holding it in the air as he narrows his eyes in the effort to see its face in the semi-dark room. “It’s almost seven. C’mon, David. It’ll be nice.”

“It’ll be nice,” he repeats. It’s supposed to be a question, maybe even an incredulous one, but Patrick’s eyes are so warm and expectant, and his smile is such a peaceful thing, that David’s skepticism never even makes it into his voice.

“That’s the spirit,” Patrick says teasingly. He pushes up onto an elbow, leaning over to press a quick kiss to David’s lips, and then he lifts up the blankets, tossing them toward the end of the bed. Even in the absence of the cozy cocoon created by the comforter, David leaves the mattress reluctantly, sliding his legs off the bed slowly before he sits upright with a pointed sigh. Patrick takes his hands and hauls him to his feet.

The Brewers do Christmas morning in their pyjamas, so all David has to do while Patrick’s in the washroom is pull on a pair of socks and attempt to tame his bedhead. The house is very quiet with everyone else asleep, quiet enough that Patrick whispers when he runs a hand across David’s back and says, “Meet you downstairs.”

“Coffee,” David whisper-shouts after him, and Patrick looks over his shoulder and whisper-yells back, “Something better.”

“Mimosas?” David asks, but Patrick’s out of hearing range.

After he’s used the bathroom, washed his face, and helped himself to Alexis’ SK-II Pitera essence - which he’s certain she can’t actually afford to be buying - he makes his way down the stairs with cautious footsteps, unwilling to disturb the sleepy tranquility that seems to permeate the air.

He pauses on his way past the living room. The fire has burned itself out, but the blue pre-dawn light coming in through the windows is keeping the room from complete darkness. Alexis is asleep on the couch, her face smushed into her pillow, and Stevie is snoring very softly on the twin-sized air mattress Clint managed to find in the basement the night before. Alexis’ arm is dangling off the couch, her hand about an inch from Stevie’s nose. He wishes he’d brought his phone down so that he could snap a picture, partially because Stevie would hate him for doing so, but mostly because it’s cute. They’re cute. It’s not something he saw coming, the two of them, but he loves both Alexis and Stevie enough that it could make his chest seize, if he dwelled on it. He wants, with a desperation he never used to allow himself to feel about other people, for them both to be happy.

“Hey,” Patrick’s voice says softly from the kitchen. “Come in here.” When David turns toward him, he nods toward Stevie and Alexis. “I took a picture.”

David’s smile feels like it overtakes his face. “I knew there was a reason I married you.”

“Yeah, for my business acumen.”

“Okay,” David says, resting his palm against the nape of Patrick’s neck briefly, “two reasons.”

“Here.” Patrick hands him a mug that’s definitely not full of coffee. The cup is warm in David’s hands, but there’s a very healthy scoop of ice cream bobbing toward the top of the liquid, with green and red pieces of something in it.

“Candy cane hot chocolate,” Patrick explains. “You’re welcome.”

David lifts the mug to his lips and takes a careful sip. “Mm,” he murmurs as he swallows, swiping ice cream off the corner of his mouth with his tongue. “Mmhm. I will need a second cup of this.”

Wearing his satisfied smile, Patrick says, “I thought so. Let’s go into the dining room; I don’t want to wake them up.”

“You had no problem making me get up,” David points out, following his husband into the dining room, where Patrick opens the curtains and turns a couple of chairs so that they’re facing the window, which looks out onto the street.

They let the quiet of the morning wrap around them as they drink their hot chocolate, looking out the window. If David tilts his head just right, he doesn’t see the dirty slush staining the bottoms of the snowbanks, but only their peaks, sprinkled with fresh snow in the night, and the dusting of snow on the bare branches of the trees, and the candles glowing in the windows of the house across the road. He rests his palm on Patrick’s thigh, and Patrick’s hand covers his, their fingers just barely interlaced.

He’s not quite sure how long they sit there before Alexis asks, “What are you doing?”

David sighs at the sound of her voice, which breaks the still serenity he’d very much been enjoying. He glances at Patrick and finds his husband looking back at him; there don’t seem to be words for exactly what they’re doing, nor is it quite something that can be shared.

Patrick turns halfway in his chair and asks, “Do you want hot chocolate, Alexis?”

“Um, sure,” she says. “Thanks.”

“You can have my chair,” Patrick tells her as he heads into the kitchen. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas!” she chirps back at him, strolling over and taking his seat. She makes herself comfortable right away, drawing her feet up onto the chair and wrapping her arms around her legs. Alexis’ pyjama set, a blush silk cap-sleeved button-up shirt and shorts, is incredibly weather inappropriate, but David would expect nothing else from his sister.

“Merry Christmas, David,” she says, giving him a prompting look.

“Merry Christmas, Alexis,” he replies, his gaze still on the outside world.

“David?” she asks, leaning forward in the chair, trying to catch his gaze.

He turns toward her and meets her curious eyes. “Do you think they’re in some kind of financial trouble again?”

To Alexis’ credit, she knows immediately what he’s asking about and why he’s asking at all. She rolls her lips together thoughtfully before she says, “No. Stevie would’ve said if there was something going on with the Motel Group. And I know for a fact that there have been two new seasons of the _Sunrise_ revival commissioned. No. No, David, I think… I think they’re here for us.”

The smile that takes up residence on her lips is tiny, tentative, but also wholly real. David finds himself offering the same kind of smile back to her, and she inches closer on her chair, tips her head to rest it against his shoulder.

Marcy and Clint come downstairs not long after Patrick has handed Alexis a cup of candy cane hot chocolate and pulled a third chair over to the window. Their arrival in the kitchen wakes Stevie, whose need for coffee can’t be satisfied by a sugary concoction and whose messy bun is secured atop her head with a velvet scrunchie that must belong to Alexis.

“We’ve got to clear out of the kitchen,” Clint says as he scoops coffee grounds into the filter. “Marcy’s secret cinnamon bun recipe is for her eyes only.” He throws a wink in David and Alexis’ direction, which prompts David to look over at his husband.

“They’re the frozen ones from Pillsbury,” Patrick murmurs by his ear before adding, at a normal volume, “Yeah, that recipe’s been in the family for generations.”

“Alright, you two,” Marcy says with a shake of her head, shooting a fondly chiding look at Patrick.

“Should we wake Mom and Dad?” Alexis asks when they’ve all been shepherded into the living room. Stevie hands her one end of a blanket and they start folding up their bedding.

“It’s still early in L.A.,” Patrick points out. “We can wait.”

“No, no,” David says, latching on to Patrick’s sleeve, his fingers curling around the comfortably worn-in material of a shirt slept in countless times. It’s strangely and thrillingly intimate to be so closely acquainted with someone else’s wardrobe: he’s washed this t-shirt of Patrick’s, folded it neatly KonMari-style, pulled it up impatiently over his husband’s head, and even worn it himself for forty-eight straight hours last month when he had a cold from hell. He feels mildly protective of Patrick and his well-loved t-shirt as he continues, “We’re not going to upend your whole routine just because they decided to randomly appear without any warning.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Patrick tells him softly, kindly.

“Ooh, David!” Alexis interjects, flicking her wrists downward and pulling them into her chest, her eyes gleaming. She drops her end of a sheet in the process, eliciting a huff from Stevie before Patrick steps forward to pick it up and take over Alexis’ share of the folding duties. “You should go put on your Christmas sweater! So Mom can see.”

“You’ve added a festive sweater to your trousseau, David?” Moira asks, swanning in right on cue, as she so often does. “Children,” she adds warmly. She cups David’s chin in her hand as she kisses his cheek, and he watches as she circles through the rest of the room, imparting kisses on Patrick, Alexis, and Stevie’s cheeks, too. His brain struggles to absorb the image of his mother, in a silk pyjama set and a black sleep vest, adorned with a glittering star-shaped brooch, in the Brewers’ living room, with its overstuffed throw pillows, its mantle lined with anthropomorphic snowmen figurines, its tree’s branches bending gently over presents wrapped with bright paper that declares _ho ho ho!_

He’s so occupied with staring at his mother that he almost misses his father saying, “Merry Christmas, son.”

David turns, blinking hard. “Merry Christmas,” he echoes faintly, taking in his dad’s steel grey housecoat and his hair, carefully coiffed despite the holiday and the early hour.

He can feel, in his stomach and his throat, the beginnings of a feeling adjacent to panic. His parents look so incongruous here that it’s making him uneasy, raising his hackles, setting his teeth on edge. This can’t last, this relaxed camaraderie, this scene in which his mother is touching his sister’s hair with genuine maternal fondness and the smile stretched across Alexis’ face lacks even an ounce of impatience to get to the gifts and get this all over with. There’s no way this effortlessness lasts all day long, no way it remains intact without some eventual disruption from his family.

But then Clint comes in with cups of coffee for Johnny and Moira, and David finds himself watching his father, in his _housecoat_ , chatting with his mother-in-law, in her floral-print pyjamas, and Stevie and Patrick laughing about something as they stack folded blankets, and Alexis’ hands flying through the air as she talks to their mother and Clint, and it’s - it’s okay. Everyone looks happy, everyone’s sleepwear is at least a little rumpled, and it’s okay.

His dad’s hand lands on his shoulder, soft but steady, and David breathes out, letting the tension seep out of his body as he does.

Maybe this is the kind of family they are now: a family with more than four members, a family that can stay in their pyjamas until noon, a family that belongs right where they are.

After they’ve all helped themselves to cinnamon buns and clementines, they settle in the living room to exchange presents. Marcy and Clint make themselves comfortable on the loveseat, which seems to be their tradition, and Johnny and Moira sit on the couch. David joins Patrick and Stevie and Alexis on the floor, which could feel sort of ridiculously childish, like they’re all waiting to rifle through the stockings Santa Claus filled for them, but he can’t bring himself to care, not when he’s holding his second cup of ice-cream-infused cocoa, not when Patrick’s knee presses gently against his.

Marcy starts things off, handing David and Patrick two wrapped parcels and telling them, “From Dad and me.”

Clint and Marcy gift them what they asked for, an Instant Pot, as well as two very fleecy pairs of pyjama pants, two thick throw blankets, and two pairs of slippers shaped like bear paws. Patrick’s are brown; David’s are black.

“You never know how cold it will get,” Marcy says, “the first year in a new house.”

“We definitely won’t get cold now,” Patrick says, flashing her a smile. He sets the bear slippers in David’s lap with an expectant arch of one eyebrow and a barely-noticeable curl of amusement at one end of his smile.

David sets his mug down carefully and slowly draws a furry paw on over each foot. Kitschy as the slippers are, they _are_ actually very warm, and he means it when he tells Marcy and Clint, “Thank you.”

His mother-in-law gives him a knowing look. “I thought those were funny - but I hope you’ll really use the blankets and the PJs.”

“No, I’ll - we’ll use these,” David says, nodding to his feet, which are, disgustingly, beginning to sweat. “You lose a lot of heat through your feet.”

“How charming,” Moira says, and David’s halfway into a grimace when he looks toward his mother, hoping he can tell her with his eyes not to say anything more - but she’s not looking at his feet, she’s looking at the throw blankets, which have been handed her way. She glances up at David and smiles as she taps one finger against the initials embroidered on one corner of the blanket she’s holding: _BR_ , for Brewer-Rose.

“That was my idea,” Clint jokes, relieving David from the burst of sentimentality he was beginning to feel.

“That’s what I would’ve guessed,” he assures Clint, and then gives Patrick a little nudge. His husband gets the hint and extracts the thick envelopes they’d brought for his parents out from under the tree. David finds himself gripping Patrick’s hand, both eager and nervous to see Marcy and Clint’s reactions.

“What’s…” Clint begins, eyes narrowed as he skims the paper he’s taken out of his envelope. “Field view… ?”

“It’s a weekend at the Marriott in Toronto,” Patrick explains, as excited as if he was the one who received the gift. “The Jays are playing on the Saturday afternoon. You can see the field from the window of the room.”

“Pat,” Clint says, stunned. “David. It’s too much.”

David shakes his head, seriously, and says, “It’s not.”

“It is,” Marcy insists, looking at the contents of her envelope with equal amounts of amazement. “ _Twelve weeks_ of ballroom lessons?”

Patrick grins and shrugs. “You’ve always wanted to, Mom. David convinced me that we should convince you to go for it.”

Clint leans in toward his wife. “Twelve weeks?”

“The game in Toronto is the week after the lessons finish,” David informs them, and Marcy laughs.

“Patrick,” she says warmly. “You chose a good one. Thank you. Both of you. This is - it’s so sweet of you. Too much, but… these are wonderful gifts.”

“You’re welcome, Mom,” Patrick says. “We’re glad you like them.”

David catches his mother’s gaze again. She lays a hand against her chest, a wordless gesture he can easily interpret: _you inherited your gift-giving acumen from me._ He nods and mouths _I know_ back to her.

“Ugh, David,” Alexis sighs. “Mine and Stevie’s gifts are so crappy in comparison.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you didn’t have to get us anything - ” Marcy starts. “Patrick said - we thought we wouldn’t exchange gifts, and that’s fine - ”

“Well, you got _us_ something,” Alexis says, finding two small gifts under the tree and passing them to David, who passes them to his in-laws. “You let us crash your Christmas.”

“We were happy to,” Clint insists. In his peripheral vision, David thinks he sees his father shift like he’s about to speak, but when he turns his head, Johnny is looking at his cup of coffee with undue concentration.

He waits for Marcy to admire the simple diamond studs Alexis picked out for her, and for Clint to say a warm thank-you for the Canadian Tire gift card that was probably Stevie’s idea, and then he holds another thick envelope out toward his sister.

“Ooh!” Alexis says eagerly, then reads what the envelope says on the front. “Oh, look, Stevie! It’s for both of us.”

“For both of us?” Stevie repeats, looking warily in David and Patrick’s direction, her expression suddenly closed off.

Alexis tears into the envelope and pulls out the small card contained within. The catch in her breathing is both visible and audible. She looks up, her eyes locking on David’s.

“What is it, honey?” Johnny asks after a moment of silence passes by, uninterrupted.

“It’s an Air Canada gift card,” David says, without looking away from his sister’s face. “So they can visit each other more often.” Alexis’ face kind of crumples into a smile, but Stevie’s mouth is pinched as her eyes flick back and forth between David and Patrick at a nearly frantic pace - and David just can’t take it anymore. “Stevie,” he says, with as much gentleness as he can manage. “I know.”

“What - ” Stevie gulps in some air, her eyes widening, but her faintly aghast expression doesn’t last long. Her lips part and then press together before she gives him a single, steady nod.

David nods back at her, matching her steadiness, feeling a rush of tenderness toward her that tightens up his throat.

“Perhaps the rest of us could be illuminated on what it is that you are so significantly cognizant of, David?” his mother proposes from the sofa.

David begins to give his head a dismissive shake, but Stevie shakes her head, too, at him - and the tightness in his throat spreads through his chest, a swelling as deep as his affection for her.

“It’s - ” Stevie pauses. Her hand, fingers curled in toward her palm, stretches in Alexis’ direction. When her knuckles brush Alexis’ skin, David watches as his sister holds onto Stevie, practically hugging her entire forearm, head tilted to see every inch of Stevie’s face. “We’re, uh… together,” Stevie says. “Alexis and I are together.”

Once her words have sat in the air for a moment, David says, quietly, “And you seem very happy. So I’m happy. For you. So happy - ” He waves a hand toward the gift card Alexis is still clutching, a touch less dramatically than he would under different circumstances, “ - that it was my idea to spend our money on assisting the two of you in arranging more of your sexual exploits.”

One of his father’s brows has tilted upward; he appears to still be catching up. “So, uh - Alexis, Stevie, you’re - ”

Exasperated, David takes it upon himself to reiterate what at this point should be abundantly clear: “Dating. They’re dating.”

“We’re not _dating_ , David,” Alexis says, her wrist flicking irritably. “We’re in a relationship.” She looks at Stevie, her expression soft and careful in ways it so rarely is. There’s something fragile in her voice when she asks, “Right?”

Stevie is smiling, the widest, stupidest smile, even sweeter and more uninhibited than the one that lit up her face when David invited her to go to New York years ago. “Right,” she says, her eyes on Alexis, who grins back at her - and it’s not the sultry smirk she can whip out on command, but with her authentic smile, the one that can’t be faked.

“What an unforeseen transpiration,” Moira comments mildly.

“Oh,” Johnny murmurs. “That’s…”

David exchanges a quick look with Alexis, who blinks at him before turning back to their father.

Several seconds pass before Johnny manages to say, his voice choked up, “That’s wonderful. It’s… it’s like my daughters are dating.”

“ _Ew_ , Dad!” Alexis cries as Stevie makes a strangled sound.

“Oh, my god,” David mutters under his breath. He turns to his husband and finds that Patrick’s grinning so hard that he physically can’t seem to stop. He's pretty sure the sound he hears from the other side of the room is Clint stifling a chuckle. 

“Well,” Johnny says, “Obviously, that’s not - obviously, what I meant was - ”

“Oh, John,” Moira says, patting his knee. “Best to surrender whilst ahead.”

“Ugh,” Alexis says with an exaggerated shudder. She flips her hair back behind one shoulder and reaches under the tree, collecting a mid-sized box, which she sets in David’s lap. “For both of you,” she says. “From both of us.”

David opens the box and rummages through a substantial amount of tissue paper before he finds a single credit-card-sized item.

“We got you the same thing,” Alexis blurts, unable to contain herself any longer. “I was thinking… you could both come visit me. But,” she adds quickly, “I mean, you can do whatever you want with it. It’s your present. You can go visit Mom and Dad. Or fly here, since you hated driving. Or go on, like - ” She shimmies her shoulders, “ - a nice little romantic getaway, or like - ”

“Alexis,” Patrick cuts in gently, having read both the look on her face and the one on on David’s. “We’ll come visit you.”

She grins again, and crawls through the mess of ribbon and wrapping paper on the floor to hug them both, one arm wrapped around each of their necks. “ _Yay_ ,” she says, quiet and delighted, right by David’s ear.

When she lets go of them, Johnny hands out slim envelopes David recognizes from Christmases past, before everything changed for their family. “More contributions to your airplane tickets,” he says.

Stevie peeks into her envelope and takes a sharp breath. “Mr. Rose - no, this is too - ”

“Hush, dear,” Moira says, gentle but firm. “You’re family.”

The look on Stevie’s face, the dewy-eyed endearment obvious despite the way she ducks her chin down, is almost unbearable. Alexis clambers back across the Christmas-morning detritus to wrap her up in a hug, and David is infinitely grateful for Patrick’s hand sliding across his lower back, for the kiss his husband drops against his shoulder.

When all the gifts under the tree have been opened, David helps Patrick sort the carnage of wrapping paper, ribbon, boxes, and bows into three categories: reusable, recyclable, and headed for the trash bin.

Patrick takes a bag of trash outside, and David stays in the living room, neatly folding up gift bags to go into storage until next year. He can make out snippets of his father’s conversation with Clint in the kitchen; it sounds like the central topics are baseball and turkey.

Stevie joins him, wandering into the room with slow steps that are nearly hesitant. She’s dressed for the day, wearing rip-free jeans and a mint-striped blouse that he’s never seen before, a purchase he suspects his sister had a hand in.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” she echoes, sitting down on the floor next to him, crossing her legs. Her hands rest on her knees and sort of grip at the denim, a sure sign she’s nervous. David has time to fold another bag with a wintry scene on it before she says, “I’m sorry for not telling you. Before.”

David shakes his head; she doesn’t need to apologize to him. “I mean… I knew. You were zero percent subtle about it, and I do have eyes,” he tells her, giving the eyes in question a slight roll for emphasis. “And I knew Patrick knew. And I thought you’d tell me when you were ready.” He abandons his task. “I’m sorry if today - if I should have waited to say something - ”

“No,” she says softly. “No, it’s okay. It’s not like you told everyone.”

“No.” He pokes her leg with his foot. “You did that.”

“Yeah,” she says on an exhale that almost turns into a laugh. “Yeah. Your whole family knows now. I think… I think Alexis is really happy about that.”

“That’s good,” he says, pulling a stray piece of tape off of the bottom of a bow.

“Yeah. It is. Even though it means my business partner knows I’m sleeping with his daughter.”

David laughs inelegantly; it nearly morphs into a snort. “You wouldn’t be the first to try. First to succeed, though.”

Stevie makes a grossed-out face, but her eyes grow somber as her revulsion fades away. She shifts around a little, picks up a thick piece of fabric ribbon and starts winding it around one of her hands. “I knew you knew. You weren’t exactly subtle, either.” She shoots him a look. “But… I don’t know, saying it out loud just seemed so complicated.”

“And does it still?” he asks. “Seem complicated?”

“No,” she says, smiling down at the ribbon. “Not… at all.”

David smiles, too, organizing all his folded bags into a pile, largest on the bottom and smallest at the top. “So, Stevie Budd,” he says. “You like white wine.”

“Looks like I do. At least the bottle I’m drinking right now.”

“Ew,” David says, and Stevie’s laughter is a sudden, marvelous thing.

“I made those,” David informs his father as Johnny passes the dish of cranberries over to Moira. Patrick’s knee bumps against his and he amends, “ _We_ made those.”

“You’ve come a long way from our _en_ chilada adventures, David,” his mother says, smiling at him across the table. She refused to put on the lime green paper crown that fell out of her cracker, but she is wearing the cheap silver bracelet that emerged from it, with its stiff clasp and its single, sizable heart-shaped charm.

“I think David makes better omelettes than I do, now,” Patrick says by way of agreement.

“It’s all about the heavy cream,” David says with authority. When Stevie stares at him like he has two heads, he frowns and confesses, “I watched a Gordon Ramsay video.”

“All of this is delicious, Marcy,” Johnny says sincerely, collecting more stuffing onto his fork.

“Stevie and I helped with that!” Alexis pipes up, using one hand to keep her purple crown from falling off her head. “We broke up all the bread.”

“Anyone can tear up bread, Alexis,” David tells her.

“Oh, my god,” she huffs, “anyone can stir cranberries, David!”

“She has a point,” Stevie says with a wicked little closed-lip smile, and Alexis giggle-gasps, “Babe!” before she turns wide eyes back in his direction and adds, “ _Burn_ , David.”

“I should have left you both in Schitt’s Creek,” he says.

“Yeah,” Stevie agrees with a shrug. “But you didn’t.”

“Would anyone like more wine?” Marcy asks in an obvious attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere, and David watches with amusement as his mother extends her glass with a thespian flourish.

“This is your fault, you know,” he murmurs to Patrick. “You made me invite them.”

“Oh, is it my fault? Seems to me that you’re the one that didn’t take any bread-breaking initiative.”

David shakes his head, watching as his husband tries and fails to hide a smile against the rim of his wine glass. “This was not the Christmas I envisioned.”

“I know.” Patrick leans over, his hand curling around David’s thigh before he kisses him, quickly and lightly but still somehow emphatically, right there at the table he’s been eating Christmas dinner at every year for his whole life. “You’re having a terrible time,” he murmurs as he pulls away.

“ _Terrible_ ,” David agrees, his gaze glued to his husband’s mouth for an instant, hunger for Patrick nearly outweighing his hunger for pie.

Patrick smiles, self-assured, like he can read David’s mind, and says, “Me, too.”

After they’ve all eaten a slice of pie and lingered at the table for twenty minutes, stomachs full and the morning’s energy giving way to mid-afternoon fatigue, David finds himself back in the kitchen by the sink, drying this time as Marcy washes the remnants of their meal off of her grandmother’s china.

“I’m sorry about my family,” he tells her quietly, sweeping a dish towel delicately across the plate she’s just handed him. She clearly cares for the china, in spite of its bright pink floral pattern, which offends every iota of David’s sense of taste. “Arriving here with little or no notice.”

“We’re happy to have your parents and your sister here, David.”

He clenches his teeth. “I understand if you feel like you have to say that, but - ”

“I don’t,” Marcy cuts in, gently but adamantly, pausing midway through washing a dessert plate. “It’s Christmas. This is where your parents should be, honey. With you.”

David sets the plate in his hands down carefully, and meets her eyes. Her gaze is both serious and compassionate. He imagines her, in a store somewhere, buying bear paw slippers just to tease him. “Thank you, Marcy,” he tells her, his voice a soft rasp. “If Clint’s terrible at the foxtrot, tell me. I’ll drive down if you need a dance partner.”

She laughs. “He has two left feet,” she says fondly. “But he tries.”

David remembers Patrick’s endless rehearsals for _Cabaret_ , the way he eventually blew past all expectations. “Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

“Hm,” Marcy says, by way of agreement. She slides him a meaningful look. “Surprises can be a good thing.”

He presses his lips together, fighting a smile, and waits to be handed another dish as his mother’s voice floats in from the living room, beseeching, “Now, Alexis, when were you planning to deign to tell your parents that you’ve taken Stevie as your new paramour?”

“Ugh!” Alexis grouses, just as loudly, “Maybe when I thought there wouldn’t be this kind of Spanish Inquisition?”

A few hours later, after a game of rummy that Moira won effortlessly, Stevie right on her heels, a viewing of _The Holiday_ that both Clint and Johnny snored through, and then a visit to YouTube to watch highlights from four different basketball games, during which David surrendered his hands to Alexis and her cuticle scissors, the day begins to naturally wind its way to a close.

There are only two bathrooms in the house, which makes getting ready for bed a slow process. Moira monopolizes the upstairs bathroom off the hallway for her thirty-five minute nighttime routine, and Patrick goes into his parents’ en suite. David changes into his pyjamas and intends to wait, knowing that his husband won’t take too long, but by the time he’s scrolled idly through Instagram, liking Twyla’s beaming selfie at the café, Santa hat perched jauntily on her head, and Jocelyn’s picture of Roland Jr. tearing into his gifts, Patrick’s still not back, and David has remembered that there’s leftover pie.

He slips into the hall and heads down the stairs on light feet. Stevie’s on her back on the air mattress in the living room, the book Alexis gave her held above her head, all her attention on its pages. He doesn’t see his sister until her hand closes around his arm like a vice and she tugs him away from the entrance to the kitchen.

He opens his mouth to say _what the fuck, Alexis?_ , but she makes a swift _shut it!_ gesture and jabs a finger toward the kitchen. He frowns deeply at her but clamps his mouth shut, and together they peer into the kitchen, inching their faces around the doorjamb, trying to remain unobtrusive.

Their father is in the kitchen with Marcy. They’re talking, but Johnny’s voice is at a volume so low that David has to strain to hear it.

“…. never something we quite managed to give them,” his dad is saying, the edge of one of his eyebrows sagging in a way that indicates discomfort.

“We love having them here,” Marcy says. “Really, Johnny - there’s nothing to thank us for.”

“No,” Johnny says on a sigh, like he’s admitting something that pains him. “There is. David and Alexis never had Christmases like this. And I thought - we thought - we were giving them everything, because we always put an extra zero on their cheques. We didn’t realize - well, once we realized, they were grown up. We tried, the last couple years, but… but we should have been trying a lot earlier. You’ve really given them a gift, this year. A do-over.”

David can only see a sliver of his father’s face, but he can see Marcy’s full expression and the solid, steadfast kindness in her eyes as she looks up at Johnny. She touches his arm. “I think,” she says, “that the best gift they received this year was spending this day with their parents.”

Alexis’ fingers dig into David’s arm even more firmly as Johnny places his hand over Marcy’s and pats it, clearly overcome. He glances at his sister and finds her eyes wet and shining.

He ends up putting his hand on top of hers, mirroring his father’s gesture from seconds before. Alexis’ grip loosens minutely. “Do _not_ start crying,” he whispers at her through gritted teeth. “If you start, I’ll start, and then - ”

She makes a terrible snorting kind of sound in an effort to hold back her tears. “I love you,” she whispers back at him fiercely.

“Fuck,” David sighs as his eyes flood. He wraps his arms around Alexis, and she squeezes him back tightly. Into her hair, he says, “I love you, too.”

Patrick’s in bed when David returns to their room, mouth guard already in. “Where’d you go?” he asks.

David closes the door softly. “I went to get pie.”

“You didn’t want to share?”

“I _would_ have,” David says, pulling off his socks as he sits down on the bed. “But I didn’t actually get any, so.”

“Did my dad beat you to the leftovers?” Patrick asks, looking amused.

“No. No, just - ” David slips under the blankets and shifts over until his side is pressed against Patrick’s, their bodies sharing warmth. “I guess I was already full.”

He doesn’t need to see Patrick’s face to know exactly what skeptical expression his husband is wearing when he asks, “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes.” David turns his head and looks at his husband’s beautiful face, at the stubble along Patrick’s jaw, the smile lines that are starting to take up permanent residence, the shape of his eyes. “I’m okay.”

“You… look happy,” Patrick acknowledges slowly, still looking at him with a degree of suspicion.

“Can I see your phone for a second?”

Patrick hands it to him without asking questions, and David unlocks the phone using his fingerprint, which is stored alongside Patrick’s. He opens Patrick’s photos and shoots a quick text to Alexis before returning the phone and snuggling down under the covers, the comforter pulled right up to his chin.

“Oh my god, _David_!” Alexis shrieks from downstairs, her joy abundantly obvious. The screech of her voice makes David cringe, his eyes squeezing shut briefly, but he smiles, too.

“ _Not_ on your Instagram!” Stevie says a few seconds later, her words floating up the stairs, too.

“Children!” His mother’s voice proclaims regally through the walls. “It is an hour for dormancy!”

“Goodnight!” Johnny adds, his tone balanced between pointed support of his wife’s case and complacent cheer.

“Goodnight!” Stevie yells up the stairs, the word punctured by her laughter.

“Goodnight,” Clint contributes from down the hall, evidently entertained by the series of shouts.

“Goodnight!” David calls back to all of them, with what he hopes is finality. He shuffles down further in the bed and bends his knees, contorting his body slightly in order to tuck his chilly feet under Patrick’s calves.

Patrick’s breath hisses out between his teeth. “You have a circulation problem,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t move away.

“It’s _winter_ ,” David reminds him, settling his cheek against Patrick’s shoulder.

Folding an arm across his chest, Patrick runs his fingers up and down the inner part of the arm David’s got pressed against his side. “I was thinking we could go for a drive tomorrow. Just me and you. I can show you my high school. The baseball field. The ice cream place I always went to with my friends.”

“Ice cream,” David repeats. Sleepiness is starting to take hold of him. “Sounds great.”

“It’s not open in the winter.”

He makes an obligatory disgruntled noise and manages to cuddle up even more firmly against Patrick. “It still sounds good. I want to see all your favourite places.”

Patrick’s fingers are moving more slowly along his arm; he’s getting tired, too. “They’re not my favourite places anymore.”

David smiles drowsily and turns his face to kiss Patrick’s shoulder, his skin warm even through his t-shirt. “Tell me what other constellations are on the ceiling.”

Patrick is quiet for a moment, studying the plastic stars. “Gemini, I think?” he muses.

If not for the fact that his eyes have closed of their own volition, David would ask his husband to point out where. “Love you goodnight,” he murmurs, words running together, no pauses to allow for punctuation; the kind of quiet, easy thing he can say to the man he married, knowing the feeling’s adequately conveyed even if all the syllables are mumbled, knowing the feeling’s returned without have to hear it out loud.

Still, Patrick replies, like he always does. “Goodnight love you,” he says in the same languid way, and David falls asleep almost instantly in Patrick’s childhood room, like he’s slept there a thousand times before, like his body knows it’s a place he’ll return to time and time again, as snowflakes drift to the ground outside the window and the simulated stars on the ceiling attempt to shine, and dreams of nothing at all.

fin.


End file.
